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Subject: PGC format.

Author: José de Jesús García Ruvalcaba

Date: 12:57:32 03/12/99


	I found this at the end of the PGN standard, in Tim Mann's chess page.


20: Binary representation (PGC)

*** This section is under development.

The binary coded version of PGN is PGC (PGN Game Coding).  PGC is a binary
representation standard of PGN data designed for the dual goals of storage
efficiency and program I/O.  A file containing PGC data should have a name with
a suffix of ".pgc".

Unlike PGN text files that may have locale dependent representations for
newlines, PGC files have data that does not vary due to local processing
environment.  This means that PGC files may be transferred among systems using
general binary file methods.

PGC files should be used only when the use of PGN is impractical due to time
and space resource constraints.  As the general level of processing
capabilities increases, the need for PGC over PGN will decrease.  Therefore,
implementors are encouraged not to use PGC as the default representation
because it is much more difficult (than PGN) to understand without proper
software.

PGC data is composed of a sequence of PGC records.  Each record is composed of
a sequence of one or more bytes.  The first byte is the PGN record marker and
it specifies the interpretation of the remaining portion of the record.  This
remaining portion is composed of zero or more PGN record items.  Item types
include move sequences, move sets, and character strings.

[big snip]


	Is there any program that has already implemented reading and writing pgc
files?



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